celebrity gossip magazines like People serving as contemporary versions of the great dramatic tragedies of the past. Today's advertising repeats the tale of the Golden Age, but inverts the value system of a classic utopia; the shopping mall combines bits and pieces of the great garden styles of Western history, and now adds consumer goods; Playboy magazine revises Castiglione's Renaissance courtesy book, The Book of the Courtier; and Cosmopolitan magazine revises the women's coming-of-age novels of Jane Austen, Gustave Flaubert, and Edith Wharton. Trash TV When speaking about trash TV, the term is referred to a whole branch of TV production that tends to exaggerate and to take themes to an extreme level. The objective of this kind of entertainment is to hit the audience through frenzy, accumulation and the absence of any distinction. Trash TV is very often close to ridiculousness, and exaggerating is the key resource: it exaggerates quantities and proportions, the physical and the body dimensions. The term "trash TV" entered into everyday language in the 1980s, to indicate artistic expressions considered of low cultural profile, but able to stimulate an audience. Starting from the 80s, in fact, the private broadcasting channels started to be very spread, and this led to new marketing strategies, focused on the possibility of attracting a larger audience paying for more exclusive shows. Now, TV shows have to build up the brand of the TV station, creating content that cannot be found on the public channels or the competitors. Further reading References Popular culture